The coach with 11 NBA championship rings said after the Dallas Mavericks swept his Los Angeles Lakers that Game 4 was the final game he will coach. Now, the question is where Jackson belongs on the list of all-time great coaches in any sport.

Former Sacramento Kings center Scott Pollard, who battled Jackson's Lakers when they had Shaquille O'Neal, told Grant Napear on KHTK that he thinks Jackson is overrated:
I just think he’s one of the most overrated coaches of our time. He’s only had the greatest players of our era on his teams. Put him in charge of the Sacramento Kings this year, and I don’t mean to offend Sacramento fans, but put him on a team with no Hall-Of-Famers on it at least no one that has established themselves as a Hall-Of-Famer already, put him as the Head Coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers right now and let’s see how he does next year with no Hall-Of-Famers on the team. That’s all I’m saying.
Pollard went on to say that he respects Jackson's championship rings, but he has "never taken a team that wasn’t a playoff team and turned them into a playoff team."

The interview was transcribed by Sports Radio Interviews. Click HERE to listen to the full segment. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/11/scott-pollard-phil-jackson-overrated_n_860550.html

This tired argument has been debated 6,000 times but I will just point out one thing: The Lakers didn't make the playoffs in 2005 under Rudy T. and Frank Hamblen. They made it in 2006 under Phil. So in addition to everything else he's confused about, Scott is factually incorrect.

A coach should be able to rein in his team. He should be able at all times to imprint his team with class and character. It is something a coach actually has control over. Jackson did not do that, a clear middle finger to controversial Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and also exhibiting the insufferable arrogance that the normal rules never applied to the Zen Master. Like a portrait of an angel in the clouds, he always acted above it all when he was really a down and dirty stealth bomber.

The media, of course, has bought into the shtick because it makes good copy. It was they who created the legend and it was Jackson who eagerly embraced it. Over the years he has given his players weighty books to read (I guarantee they never read past the cover unless it was a comic book and even then it was a 50-50 shot). I remember watching a 60 Minutes segment on Jackson in which, when he wasn’t talking in elliptical nonsense, he was seen going around the locker room sprinkling incense. It is a ritual on Indian reservations in North Dakota, Jackson's native state, which isn't quite the same as a Laker basketball game in Los Angeles. It seemed like such a transparent element to be different, to be unorthodox, when it reeked of narcissistic grandiosity.

Because of the media’s need to create instant heroes and villains, coaches are given far too much credit when the team wins and far too much criticism when the team loses. There would be no talk radio without them.

So the Zen Master is gone. Until he un-retires again because of boredom and missing the klieg lights and having a car trunk still stuffed with incense. And decides to next coach the New York Knickerbockers until he realizes that no amount of incense burning will ever change the most dysfunctional, pathetic and screwed up sports franchise in North America.

But Phil Jackson won’t be held responsible. The structural incompetence of the Knicks will be blamed. And Jackson is undoubtedly writing a sequel to his enormously successful Sacred Hoops, this one apparently called Zen and the Art of Making Millions
http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110513/ts_dailybeast/14061_lalakerscoachphiljacksonisoverrated

A coach should be able to rein in his team. He should be able at all times to imprint his team with class and character. It is something a coach actually has control over. Jackson did not do that, a clear middle finger to controversial Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and also exhibiting the insufferable arrogance that the normal rules never applied to the Zen Master. Like a portrait of an angel in the clouds, he always acted above it all when he was a down and dirty stealth bomber.

The media, of course, has bought into the shtick because it makes good copy. It was they who created the legend and it was Jackson who eagerly embraced it. Over the years he has given his players weighty books to read (I guarantee they never read past the cover unless it was a comic book and even then it was a 50-50 shot). I remember watching a 60 Minutes segment on Jackson in which, when he wasn’t talking in elliptical nonsense, he was seen going around the locker room sprinkling incense. It is a ritual on Indian reservations in North Dakota, Jackson's native state, which isn't quite the same as a Laker basketball game in Los Angeles. It seemed like such a transparent element to be different, to be unorthodox, when it reeked of narcissistic grandiosity.

No modern NBA coach has been able to "rein in" his players for the last 20-30 years. Some talk about it a lot and get reputations as "disciplinarians," "taskmasters," "sticklers on the fundamentals, etc etc." but they usually get fired (or quit) after two or three seasons tops.

Current examples are Scott Skiles and John Kuester.

Kuester will be fired 15 seconds after the NBA lockout is settled (the only reason he hasn't been already is that ownership doesn't want to pay two coaches while games aren't being played); Skiles is probably OK for the moment, but odds are good it will all fly to pieces within another year.

But as easy as it is to dismiss his accomplishments since his teams have had Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, Shaq, Kobe etc... on them the fact of the matter is the Lakers and Bulls won titles when Phil was coaching and they didn't when he left.

Getting the most out of your superstar is part of coaching. These days, in the NBA, it may be the biggest part.

Simmons wrote what could probably serve as a rebuttal to this nonsense that I posted in the NBA playoff thread. It's not true that anyone could have coached Jordan. Or Kobe. Or even Shaq, for that matter. I remember the 2.5 season stretch with Del Harris that was capped off by Kurt Rambis after Harris was fired (because he was too stubborn to play Kobe Bryant regularly) and an embarrassing sweep at the hands of the Spurs.

Just to shoot down one minor point that Buzz makes, something I've seen repeated a lot by people who like to traffic in snark, both Gasol and Bynum are big readers, and did in fact read the books Jackson gave them. And Kobe, of all people, read "The Tipping Point" when Jackson gave it to him, though he threw away just about every other book from what I understand.